Working Paper
Enforcing the Right to Food in India
Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on...
Working Paper
Realizing the Right to Food in South Asia
Basic human rights recognize the intrinsic value of freedom, only not for the value of freedom itself, but also for its instrumental role enabling an individual to choose a bundle of commodities and wellbeing. The role of food, a basic necessity of...
Journal Article
Anti-corruption policy making, discretionary power and institutional quality
We analyse policymakers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (September 2012)
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Blog
Good Governance: Is it about Appearance or Action?
by
Matt Andrews
May 2013
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
Working Paper
Reconstruction from Breakdown in Northeastern India
The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region’s crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor...
Working Paper
The Rule of Law, Legal Traditions, and Economic Growth in East Asia
This paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this...
Working Paper
Aid and Rent-Driven Growth
This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2013)
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
Blog
Democracy, Transparency, and Parliamentary Broadcasting
by
Patrick Gregory
August 2013
22 August 2013 Patrick Gregory ‘Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done’. In its shortened form this...
Blog
Do the Awakening Giants Have Feet of Clay?
by
Pranab K. Bardhan
May 2010
It's imperative to demolish myths around the economic achievements of China and India and get a better sense of the real challenges. The author of the...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid and the Failure of State Building in Haiti Under the Duvaliers, Aristide, Préval, and Martelly
After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid in Africa
How does aid impact democracy in sub-Saharan Africa? Drawing on existing literature, this study elaborates on the various channels, direct and indirect, through which development and democracy aid has influenced transitions to multi-party regimes and...
Working Paper
Donor Assistance and Political Reform in Tanzania
Tanzania has been a relative success story in Africa in terms of political reform. While foreign aid has helped strengthen institutions that advance accountability, it simultaneously supports a status quo that undermines accountability and...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid and Democratic Consolidation in Zambia
The study examines Zambia’s evolving aid relationship in relation to the country’s democratic trajectory. The impact of aid in terms of democratic consolidation is linked to the development of the party system, the efficacy of key democratic...
Working Paper
Beyond Electoral Democracy
In the 1990s, analysts were almost unanimous in considering Benin to be one of the most important aid recipients among the newly democratizing African countries. After more than two decades of democratic practice, the country has clearly completed...